Putin's invasion targets Ukraine's democratic example rather than territorial claims. Putin fears Russian citizens will embrace Ukrainian democracy as an alternative to his autocracy. A viable peace deal requires altering Putin's cost-benefit calculus by addressing that democratic threat. NATO expansion did not cause the invasion; unanimous NATO admission for Ukraine is unlikely and Article 5 would compel collective defense. The invasion has paradoxically strengthened NATO, prompting Sweden and Finland to join and spurring higher defense spending. Zelenskyy won a free and fair election, while Putin staged charades and imprisoned opponents such as Alexei Navalny.
It may be difficult for a real-estate mogul like Donald Trump to recognize, but Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine is not about slices of war-torn land in eastern Ukraine. It is about Ukraine's democracy. Putin fears that the Russian people will see that democracy as an enticing alternative to his stultifying autocratic rule. Trump is unlikely to secure a peace deal unless he acts on that reality and changes the cost-benefit analysis behind Putin's continuing war.
Much of the public analysis of the Alaska summit between Trump and Putin, and the Washington collection of European leaders protecting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from the temperamental Trump, has been replete with red-herring issues. For example, Putin did not invade Ukraine because of feared Nato expansion. The unanimous consent of all Nato members required to admit Ukraine is nowhere on the horizon, especially since article 5 of the Nato treaty would require all Nato members to defend Ukraine from the ongoing Russian incursion.
Nor did Putin invade to liberate the Ukrainian people from the rule of Zelenskyy, whom he regards as illegitimate and even a neo-Nazi. This claim is rich because Zelenskyy was chosen in a free and fair election, while Putin risked only an electoral charade while imprisoning, ultimately lethally, his most charismatic opponent, Alexei Navalny. And the war is not about Putin's pining to resurrect the Soviet Union, whose collapse he sees as the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.
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